Thursday, May 30, 2013

I wasn't at the ballet, but the model this particular day was trained
in ballet. Unfortunately, I didn't catch her name. She was a pretty
great model, especially for this session, which was an anatomy class.
Like many dancers, she was muscular but very lean and, of course, very
flexible, which made observing her musculature very clear and easy.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Friday, May 3, 2013

The new Iron Man movie opens today. I probably won't get a chance to see it until next week, but I'm pretty excited for it. I never cared much about Iron Man in the comics, but I've liked the movies a lot, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr.'s performance.

One thing I did always like about Iron Man was the way his armor was drawn back in the sixties by Don Heck and Jack Kirby. Later renditions of the suit featured sculpted musculature, which often made him look like he was just wearing painted-on spandex like the rest of the superheroes. The original versions were bulky and barrel-chested. They were also covered with bolts and rivets. It really looked like a guy in a suit made of metal cans. More recent versions really play up the tech that would be involved with such a suit, and have lots of parts and joints. It looks cool, but it's hard to draw.

The Iron Man suit was in constant flux in the early years, before settling on a streamlined version that lasted from the late 1960's through the 1980's. I'm partial to this version, with the face-plate with the pointy ends sticking up and the grill over his mouth. I also liked the little transitor-radio-like antenna he had on his shoulder. Who needs wi-fi?

Another thing I liked about the older depiction was the way you could see his eyeballs behind his mask. I just discovered that there was in fact a rationale for it . . .

Watch out, Mr. Doll!

I also liked how lo-fi his armor was. I'm sure at the time this seemed space-age, but today it's amusing to see how proud Tony Stark was of his armor that ran on magnets, transistor radios, gyroscopes, and batteries.

Also note how much storage he's built into his suit, including a first aid kid into his boot. That Tony Stark thinks of everything!

I started my Iron Man sketch in pencil, and then inked and colored it in Photoshop. Here's the earlier stages: